Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The Wind Waker HD: IN-credible Chart Revealed

Nintendo lifted the review embargo for The Wind Waker HD and the game already has been seen in stores, so in the next few days we should learn everything we want to know about the HD remaster. Sadly most reviews so far have been very shallow, dealing more with the content of the original game than the improvements of the HD version. So, so far we still haven't learned anything new yet, like let's say the whereabouts of the Tingle Statues.

The review from GameTrailers (written by TSA) is one of the more critical ones, which I like, because surely they could have done more with The Wind Waker HD than they did. But in his video he presented us with the IN-credible Chart, which is great, because we finally get to know, which Triforce Shards can be gotten directly without a Triforce Chart. So, let's take a look:

It was safe to assume that the four minidungeons at Outset, Overlook Island, Stonewatcher Island and your private cabana would lead down to Hyrule and give you the Triforce Shards directly. And this seems to be the case. The last Triforce Shard goes to the Ghost Ship, which I think is an excellent choice. It's probably the longest quest next to the Savage Labyrinth, so having a shard here makes it more balanced. And storywise the Ghost Ship could become a vessel that was looking for the "Triumph Forks" and they actually managed to salvage one, but then they became cursed by evil. This works just fine. With the Golden Warship, Islet of Steel and Bird's Peak Rock the quests are very short, you can get the Triforce Chart with little to no effort, so still having a Triforce Chart in these places makes it feel more balanced as well.

Bird's Peak Rock would have been another option, because it does have a hole potentially leading down to Hyrule, but they would have needed to add another minidungeon to this place to make it feel like an actual effort.

It also seems like the three remaining Triforce Charts lead to the original places. The chart from Islet of Steel leads to Greatfish Island, the chart from Bird's Peak Rock leads to Stone Watcher Island and the chart from the warship leads to the Cliff Plateau Isles. Actually this looks all very close to each other, so you can probably combine some stuff, like getting the two Triforce Shards at Stone Watcher Island at once.